I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball.
In a frid Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday Frida Egg, fridagg Bride Egg.
Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump course game. Welcome to the Friday Egg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we're talking about how to carry out a golf course renovation on a very tight budget. My guest is Clay Paine, who is the superintendent at
Buffalo Dunes in Garden City, Kansas. Buffalo Dunes is a municipal golf course that you'll be hearing a lot about in the coming years, and that's because Clay Paine, along with the Archet Zach Vardy, is undertaking a six year renovation that is going to leave this course looking like a cross between prairie dunes and Wildhorse. That's not an exaggeration. The work really looks that good right now. And maybe the most impressive thing about this project is the cost.
It's way less than most renovations that are happening today. There is a good article on this topic recently by Bradley Klein in the USGA Green Section Record. This article is called Managing the Rising Cost of Golf Course Renovations, And basically what I found out from this article is that the standard cost of major course renovations, and we're talking about replacing irrigation, drainage, greens, bunkers, cart paths, this
has become sort of the standard renovation. It is a big project, but this is what we're used to talking about when we talk about updating a golf course. That sort of project has risen into the ten to twenty million dollar range, maybe higher. So jobs that used to cost five million are now more like fifteen million. And needless to say, that's that's a disturbing trend. It's obvious why it's happening. There are inflation issues, there are supply issues when it comes to the labor that carries out
these projects, So I get why it's happening. But what the threat here is is an increase in the disparity between the affordable public golf that most of us play and the high end private and resort golf that sets the example for what golf course architecture should look like. That disparity is dangerous, right, and so one of the most important things that we can talk about right now in golf is how to do quality renovations on a budget. Now, Clay Pain is the first to admit that he has
a lot of advantages at Buffalo Dunes. He's got a sandy site. There's no need for a new irrigation system. It's basically surface drainage throughout the site. They don't need the bunker liners and stuff like that. But it's still striking that he and Zach Vardy are doing the kinds of things that at most courses are costing millions of dollars and Clay and zachert doing them for tens of thousands of dollars instead with the help of Clay's staff.
So I figure it's incredibly worthwhile to get his perspective on how exactly he's managing this. Clay is a super impressive young superintendent. I think he just gets it in a number of ways, whether you're talking about agronomy or architecture or the culture that he's trying to develop within his staff. So I'm very excited for you all to hear from him first. Though this episode is an installment
in our Superintendent series. So of course it is brought to you by none other than Toro and specifically the Toro Workman MDX Lithium up and down Ham and Egg. To the list of great golf pairings, we can now add the Toro Workman MDX and electrification. For more than two decades, the Workman MDX has been the Superintendent's trusty sidekick,
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a win win. So visit Toro dot com, slash golf and reach out to your local Toro distributor for more information. All right, let's get to Clay pain All right, I'm here with Clay Paine. Clay, you grew up in Cimarron, Kansas, about thirty minutes from where you currently work in Garden City, Kansas. This is the southwestern part of the state, maybe not a region that many people have been to. What kinds of golf courses did you grow up playing in the area.
Yeah, Cimarron is a nine hole golf course. I previously, until about fifth grade lived twenty miles north of town, and about fifth grade we moved in and at the time the nine hole golf course was sand greens, So I grew up playing the first two years sand green golf course, which is awesome. It's fun target golf.
Yeah, I mean that's like a thing in Kansas, right is the sand green courses are a part of the golf culture out there.
Yeah, they still have a sand green State championship, so it's of a cool niche of the golf market. But about two thousand, the community came together and raised funds and actually built all of a brand new nine hole golf course. So they did all of the irrigation, they did all of the the grassing, they built a clubhouse. Looking back on it now, that was kind of maybe the roots that I've built upon, you know, into this
current project and how we're doing it. But you know, at the time, it was a blast being a fifth sixth grader going up after school and working with your with your dad and putting an irrigation and building a golf course.
I was wondering about this actually because I looked up Cimarron on Google Earth and saw this little, nice looking golf course right next to town, like it's right pressed up against the town. And I saw that it was built in the early two thousands, and I figured this must have been when you were a kid. So you were actually you actually saw this project kind of play out.
Oh yeah, we're I was able to just walk across the street and so I was right there in the middle of it, and uh yeah, seeing it go from the sand greens to we They hired out the shaping, but everything else was done through community members and volunteers. So yeah, it was kind of cool to see that, especially at an early age.
So going back to the sand greens, you know, can you can you can you just describe from somebody who's never you know, I've actually never played on sand greens. It's a it's a hole in my golf resume. I've seen people play on them. I think a lot of people maybe aren't even familiar with how you would go about playing golf on sand greens, So what's what's the whole process there?
Uh, that golf course was non irrigated, so it's all
buffalo grass fairways and tea's tea areas. And then once you get up to the green we're talking, they're not contour because they don't want the sand to wash away, so they're flat, and then they have an oiled sand and that sand being oiled can pass and so you and I hit onto the green and then there's utensils that are setting aside the green, and you go and you drag an iron from you mark your ball, put it to the side, and then you drag a line with that iron, and then you put your ball and
then you go back in like you were raking a bunker and you re rake it for the golfers behind you.
That's fantastic. I love that. And you know, there are a few places of course in Kansas as well as elsewhere that still have sand greens, some that are in extreme climates and things like that where they can't have you know the typical kinds of golf turf grasses. But it's definitely it's it's a way to play. You can do it like they roll pretty nicely for what they are right.
Well, And it's just kind of a pure form of golf. It doesn't have to be perfect. You're just going out there because you want to swing and be with your friends, and so, yeah, I think that that could catch on. It doesn't have to be I mean, it might be part golf. It might be a little pitch and put sand green course in your park, you know, so it doesn't have to be the full full deal. So yeah, it was a pure fun way to play and grow up.
Yeah, it's certainly a way to keep maintenance costs under control and under control as well, you know, with the changing climate and all that. So, you know, fast forwarding a little bit in your life, you ended up going, assuming my research is right here, you ended up going to Hutchinson Community College for a couple of years before transferring to k State where you did your your turf degree.
When you were in Hutchinson, did you spend any time at the famous Prairie Dunes Country Club, one of the greatest courses in the world.
I did not, and it is one of the one of my all time regretsive, but what I let an opportunity definitely slip. You know, at the time, I thought that my way into golf was chasing the golf ball around and playing, and so I didn't didn't even think about the maintenance side of it thoroughly. At that point. I had worked on golf courses, but you know, still was probably young and arrogant enough to think that I
could do this for a living. And yeah, one of my biggest regrets Corey then superintendent there now that they're an inspiration for for Buffalo Dunes and really Midwest golf.
Yeah, some of the work that you're doing at Buffalo Dunes, which we'll talk about later on, has the distinct look of it looks like prairie dunes like it really, it really looks quite a bit like that, which is pretty cool to see. So you said you were mainly into competitive golf when you were younger. What's what's the basic summary of your of your competitive career.
I didn't ever win a high school tournament, so that should have been an indicator in a league. Ross Goobell went on and played Division one golf and he beat me by one every time, So it wasn't I wasn't overly far from playing competitive golf, but far enough away that there was red flags that if I was aware, I should should have detoured earlier on. So yeah, good enough to think I was good, bad enough to not ever be good.
When did you figure out that you wanted to start to work toward the career in turf.
It was probably about that same time. So I came back home and worked at Simmron, and I was fortunate enough the superintendent took me to one of the superintendent state golf tournaments. And that's a funny story how this all rolled and played out. But I drove a green and the person in front of me got mad and kicked my ball off the green. Well, later on it was all superintendent, so it wasn't that big a deal. Later on in the clubhouse, this person was Trampis Nickel.
He was the superintendent at Wamigo Country Club, which is twenty miles from Kansas State, and he offered me a job, and so I took the job. He hires only Western Kansas kids, so I didn't have to go through a resume thing. We're kind of the ad kind of farm side of the state, so he thought that that background worked well for his staff. And yeah, that was the break I needed in my career, because he led me on and pushed me to Jackson Hole and he had this kind of snowball.
From there you went to a number of different places. Eventually you found your way to Dismal River, which for people who are familiar with the famous sand Hills Country Club out near Mullen, Nebraska and the spectacular sand Hills of Nebraska, Dismal River is the neighboring course and came up a little bit later after sand Hills was built. You were working there? How did you? How did you get there? What was the impetus to for applying for that job? Getting that job?
So I traveled sixteen hours to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and took the internship up there. The assistant superintendent turned out he grew up in Cimarron, Kansas. Oh wow, oh yeah, a small world. After that season in Jackson he took the superintendent job at Disneal River and asked if I would like to come on board. So I, after school went up there and was an assistant superintendent. At the time of when I was hired was just the Nicholas Course.
I think it was Jack Nicholas's two hundred and fiftieth design, So there was some cool stuff with that. It's an exceptionally hard golf course, but the setting is spectacular. So yeah, I was up there for two seasons and then the ownership decided, Hey, there's an opportunity to do a second golf course, and that's I was fortunate enough to be be in those discussions and hire a firm and go through that process.
And this firm was Renaissance Golf Design. This is Tom Doak's architecture firm. I think that listeners have probably heard of this little outfit. You were on board during that construction process. This is kind of a legendary project now because of who was working on it, right, there was there was a crew of very talented people there who have gone on to do interesting things in the golf industry. So who was there and tell me a little bit about what it was like working with them?
Yeah, I actually wrote down a list because this is this is one of the highlights of my career. Was kind of being the ag side, the soil side to this band. Right we were Anyone that's traveled to Mullen, Nebraska knows that it's there's nothing else to do out
there for the most part. And so we would wake up in the morning and we were it was golf course construction, and we came in uh myself and the superintendent would cook lunch for everyone, and it was golf course construction talk at that point, and then we would go do it again and then at night. And it was just that way for for a full, you know,
growing cycle. And so uh some of the interns that are was there, Uh Zach Vardy, Blake, Coenamp, Brett Hawk's team, Yaeger, Coke Fitch, Clyde Johnson, Jonathan Reaesner, Connor Cummings, Ryan Yohans, James Burt uh and those are just the interns like this. That was just that was just the young guns that were out there with with Rakes and it was a blast.
And then they they were learning from the best. You had Don Mahaffey and slam Brian Slonik and Brian Schneider there and all of the upper echelon of Renaissance and uh just created a wonderful environment. I was very fortunate to be the grass guy in that band.
What did you learn about construction from seeing this process play out? From seeing you know, Tom Doak lead a project and Brian Schneider Brian Islonic implemented what were some of the big takeaways about just what it means to build a golf course.
Yeah, they obviously can say it in a more elegant way, but less is more, especially when you're on such a site that's blessed, you know, like like the sand Hills of Nebrasko are and so that that was fantastic. It was also pretty humbling to see the guys that are at the top of their industry, you know, allow some of us to fail to push the limits and hey, go go try something after hours, Go take a dozer
and see if you can make something cool. You know, if it doesn't work out, we'll push it in tomorrow and we'll start over. That's you know, with only sand tunes, you can get away with that. You know, it's not a major cost issue. So being able to kind of push the boundaries in some in some ways and trust trust those young guys to see their potential was probably the biggest takeaway.
As an It doesn't have to be perfect right away. You can go go out there, mess around and then and then if it needs to be fixed, you can fix it later.
I guess, Yeah, that's why they're there, That's why the the pros. Pros are there to mess up any anything. But there was probably some cool features that came out of that, and they would know more behind the scenes than I did even of what was what was left and what was you know, kind of pushed back and amended later.
Well, So for people who aren't really familiar with how like a construction crew is structured, you know, you were overseeing kind of the growing or the turf aspects of the construction process. What does that mean, Like what were you doing on a day to day basis during construction and did you get in and do any shaping or watch shaping or you know, do some of the architectural sides of it as well as the agronomic side of it.
I watched the shaping just because I was interested in that. A golfer and trying to understand, you know, their theory of you know, how the ground game, you know, was kind of new to me. You know, growing up on sand I was used to throwing it right to the flag and so just being around them was fantastic. You know, behind the scenes, we're making sure that you know, irrigations going in, you know, ahead of the grassing their shape.
They're rough shaping at first, and then irrigation is going to follow that, and then those guys are going to come in and fine tune it so their process will go from a dozer down to a sand pro down to a rake. And at that point we had enough bottom on property that you know, we utilized the rake, you know, in fairways and other areas that typically didn't get that one inch difference, you know, might be lost
in the eighty acres worth of fairways. Those guys were, they were nailed in it, and so it was fun. And then for us making sure we're ahead of them with irrigation, but then also coming back in once we've sprayed grass. You know, that's when it's kind of in our court as well, so making sure that the system is watering where it needs to be and fertility and everything else cool.
So yeah, I mean, that's that's quite an experience to have early in your career, and I'm sure we'll hear how it has has come to inform some of the stuff that you're doing recently. But you know, in between that experience at Dismal River and what you're doing now, my understanding is that you were at bally Meal, which is another fantastic Tom Doak golf course, this one in Holy Yoke, Colorado. How did you end up there?
So during that time, at the end of the grow in, I was able to go up there and be the superintendent for the first year at Dismal River of actual golf. I wanted to see that project through from prairie to play and was able to accomplish that goal. But in the meantime I was fortunate enough to marry my wife, Samantha. Turns out Mullen isn't the place that she thought we needed to raise a family, and so there was a time when I needed to look at other options. Bally
Neil was one of those. It fit the style that I had fallen in love in love with at Dismal River with the sand dunes, and Bally's about four years or four four miles or excuse me, four hours from Garden City, and so it was closer to people. And yeah, I went out there assistant superintendent under Lancelower and very fortunate the first year we were maintaining only a golf course, we were able to put in the I don't what the commons I think is what they call it is the one acre putting green.
Right, it's a big putting green. If you can envision this like most of the buildings at Ballynial, the pro shop, the restaurant, the lodging that they have kind of forums, a courtyard, you know, and in the middle of this courtyard type thing, is this massive putting green.
Yeah. Massive, like one hundred and one hundred and seventeen yard I think is the longest putt you can have. So so yeah, a lot bigger than what you're probably thinking as you're trying to visualize how big this green is. But yeah, again, I was a right place, right tom. I was fortunate enough to, you know, watch mister Goak walk out in the dunes and try to find his routing for the Mulligan course, which was the par three course that was added the second year that I was there.
That was shaping, you know again, Brian Schnyder, Eric Iverson I think jumped in a couple of times since he's close and outside of the shaping, we did all the irrigation work in house. We did all the grow in as well, so that was a very busy summer but one of the coolest additions to a golf course, I think you can make.
Bally Neil has some of the most distinctive turf conditions that I've ever experienced, certainly in America. So you know what, what's special about the turf there? What what enables that turf to be the way it is?
Yeah, I think the whole culture is what enables it to be cool. It does. It's not perfect, and that's not what this game is supposed to be. It's supposed to be. And you know an experience. We're chasing this little white ball around and having it, having a great time, and that's that's kind of the that's what you get from the moment you step on that property. And so turf conditions out there, the dry and firmness, create opportunities for you to play around. You're not worried about entering
a gin handicap at bally Neal. You're going to try to make a shot that your friends want to remember and talk about, you know, at the bar later. And so I think it brings out a little bit of you know, childhood playing and the conditions come into that.
You know, you if it's slow and soft, you're not going to be able to hit up, you know, a hybrid putt from fifty yards off the green and watch it take the slow And so that's where I think the conditions, you know, tie into the experience at balley Neil, and it's it's pretty unique. You know. Now, you can't go wall to wall rescue in most spots in America. The people that can are also the people we talk
about the resorts that are the best. And you know, the turf quality and turf type definitely plays into that.
Yeah, I mean it's it's incredible turf and an incredible landscape. This might be not the way that you think about it, but if putting myself in the position of being a greenkeeper, a superintendent assistant superintendent at balan Neil, I would think of it as being almost a little bit scary to
maintain turf that's that close to the edge. Did you ever experience it that way where you like, man, we are really as Jared Kalina, later superintendent at Balanil, puts it, did you really feel like you were riding the line and that this could like go wrong.
Yeah. Absolutely. You think about a dry golf course in a typical American setting and you'll see the tire tracks, you know that are burnt out spots.
I remember seeing my footprints. I mean that was I remember like creating footprints as like I've never seen this before.
Yeah, Vali, Neil. You see little brown footprints from the caddies and the players, and so yeah, that edge is definitely real. But again, the the culture, I mean, the guys aren't afraid of it because they see it from day one, and so you kind of understand it. You it'll come back to you know, we're worried about being perfect every single day. Well, we're trying to look at a big picture. It'll bounce back. It might, it might be a little brown for a second, but that that
stuff's gonna be very hard to kill. And you know it's again it's it's the product over the process and just not we're not worried about being perfect. You know, there's gonna be weeds in the bunkers. There's gonna be bunkers that aren't right. That's that's fine out there.
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no matter the venue. It's polar white body makes customization a breeze too, so the Vista can pull double duty as a rolling billboard while getting folks from point A to point B on point. Visit Toro dot com, slash golf and reach out to your local Toro distributor for more information. All right, let's get into talking a bit about what you're doing right now in your career. Maybe just start by giving me the basic download on Buffalo Dunes.
How would you describe this course to someone who has has never heard of it?
First and foremost, we're a municipal golf course where owned and operated by the City of Garden City, and that's been a major asset to what we're what we're doing now. I have three assistants, Mitch Chocolate, Brock Walter, and Brier Livermore. They're all local kids. Buffalo Dunes was our favorite golf course growing up for all of us, and so there's a great deal of pride in our staff on a daily basis. But seven years ago I was hired. I
came in from vallely Neil as the assistant superintendent. At the time, Toby Watun was a superintendent and I took over shortly after him, within two months, I believe, And so I went that first year without a titled assistant superintendent.
We had hired Mitch Chocoley, but he was still going through the university and wasn't able to graduate until December, and so I went to our assistant city manager, which was our direct boss at the time, and said, hey, can we use this budgeted fund to develop a master plan? The intent was not to we didn't know when we would be able to apply the master plan, but I if funds arose, we wanted to have that master plan in place, and so we started the architect you know
search we went through. First of all, I think that and this is very important to any process, not special to municipalities, is we really understood the why initially our staff Our why is, you know, we want to go home and be great dads and great fathers, and by being able to implement this master plan, it was going to create the efficiencies that we could go out and produce an extremely good product, you know, with forty hour work weeks, which is kind of unheard of, you know
in the agronomy side of things. You know. Secondly, and then you're trying to find the golfers why why is this project important to them? And the ladies didn't have their own, so we were trying to create, you know, the yardages that set up for good for women, for junior golfers, for our seniors as well. And then the community understanding, you know, why is this project. I'm a non golfer, so why should I support a master plan
for Buffalo Dunes. Well, the economic impact that comes through this golf course and bringing people outside in is a huge thing. And then most importantly was the environmental side. This master plan allowed us, I think will allow us to save millions and millions of gallons of water annually. And then what does that look like over one hundred years. So we started up six year renovation, six phases. The
timing for that was kind of twofold. A. We're doing it in house, and so I've got a staff of you know, eight people, seven eight people, and so three holes was about all we could take on per season and also maintain the other fifteen holes. Secondly was we built a nursery green that is about one acre, and that one acre nursery green supports three greens worth of turf every year. So we plant it in the spring for twelve hundred dollars. We harvest it in the fall
to go out to the green site. So that's kind of how it all started. We can get into the nuts and bolts a little bit more.
Oh we will. Yeah, I'm fascinated by this project. But I mean, you know, first of all, maybe you could just give me a picture of what the course looked like when you arrived. Yeah, were were some of the strengths of the course, What were the reasons that it was your favorite course growing up in the region, And then what were some of the issues that it had that needed to be addressed by this project that you're undertaking now.
Extremely gifted site, So we are located at the south end of a natural dune site, so the soil structure is similar to dismal, it's similar to ballet neal and just sets us up really nicely. You can't replicate sand sites. If you do, it's gonna cost you millions and millions and millions. So that's a number one. Uh. Number two is when this when the property was donated, it was it was in the the fine print that there was to be no housing built around it. So we don't
have any housing. We're surrounded by agfields and sand dunes, you know, so that's kind of unique, especially for a municipal golf course. We would think of them always tucked into the city, beautiful rolling hills topography. They really there's a there's not a lot of flat lies, which you think Western Kansas, that's all I'm going to have. We have some you know. Now we have two skyline greens. First hole, you think, why did I drive out here?
And the first approach shot you're like, okay, well this is this is as advertised. Yeah, so I think it was all that, you know together. The downside, I think, you know, we've seen the potential with the prior history of seeing these these really nice sand dune sites of what it could be, and at the time there was there was probably four to five hundred pine and cedar trees on the property. That were planted in the eighties.
Not non native trees. These are the trees don't want to native.
Native vegetation in our area is yucka and sagebrush.
So yeah, it's not really a treed area. It's not at all. It's the plains.
And so that was part of the plan, was to go ahead and take out some of those corridors open up these vistas. That makes this property special. So that was probably the hardest thing. Another benefit that I didn't I forgot to mention, but should is we had an irrigation system installed in two twenty fourteen, and so it was relatively new, so all the building blocks were there before me. I'm the fourth superintendent in fifty years. Bob
Blummel was certified superintendent for thirty plus years. He's now on our seasonal staff. Everything was set in line. I'm just this is just the next echalon of improving it agonomically. It was sound, irrigation was in and now this project is elevating it even more.
You mentioned that the initial bit of funding that you needed to execute, not execute a master plan, but create a master plan even to like start the process came from kind of like defrayd salary for an assistant who was going to come later. This is kind of the first of what I interpret to be a number of really clever financial moves that you've made in the process
of carrying out this project. How have you put together the funding for what you've done over the past couple of years and what you're going to continue to do over the next few years. Where are you finding these little nooks and crannies where you can get the money to do this stuff.
Yeah, I'd like to reiterate this is an incredibly blessed site and so the normal construction some of the things that has to happen on other sites does not have to happen on our site. We're semi arid, so sixteen inches of rainfall a year, So if a bunker washes out, we're excited about it. I mean, it finally rained on the golf course and everything's good, so no drainage. We
don't have to line our bunkers. Were digging into natural dune site, and so there's a lot of expense that's not going to be included in this project just becau because of the blessing of the site. And so the first couple of years we would do three greens and green complexes for thirty thousand dollars, and that money was typically found through budget savings through both the maintenance side
and the clubhouse side of the budget. So overall budget we would try to say that thirty thousand and then that's what we would use. Every labor day. We would go into a renovation and we would strip away the old sod. That old turf that was on our greens was really high quality, and so that was donated to
local nine hole golf courses. I think that there's seven to eight golf courses that now used our old bent grass to take to their properties and upgrading them as well, which now has turned it into a Western Kansas project. We build our own nursery, right so hunt we do that for twelve one hundred dollars. That would be one hundred and twenty grand worth of sod if we were to if we were to purchase at a sad outsite. We're identifying areas around the golf course, say in between
tea boxes, that are bluegrass. Well. Part our biggest mission is to take care of our most precious resource, which is our water, and so we want to remove as much irrigated acreage as we can. So we've identified areas that aren't typically played in in between teas, we're ripping that bluegrass out. That bluegrass is then transplanted to around the green, so we're not buying any new sad from
the disruption of the New New Deal. And then the following year those bluegrass areas are then converted to non irrigated native and so we've we're getting efficiencies through not having to mow it twice a week, not having to water it nightly, not having to fertilize it. Esthetically, it's much better. You start to break up the camouflage of green.
You know that you can't fill the topography rolling. Now we've got different hues and colors, and that's you know, we're starting to fill this site, really start to move again through through that one turf conversion.
So you know, lots of different little efficiencies and you're finding ways to do this project quite cheaply. You mentioned three greens for thirty thousand dollars or something to that effect, and you know, I can't tell you how much lower of a number that is than just about any other renovation that I've covered or talked about over the past few years. And as you say, part of it is because the site is obviously wonderful and sandy, and you don't have to do a lot of things that other
courses have to do. But you also obviously deserve credit for being very economical with things. So the architecture side of this, you're doing a lot of this work in house, as I understand it, with your staff. That's why you're doing just a couple of holes at a time. You're leveraging your your in house staff to do quite a bit of this work. But you also have the assistance of some architecture minds. So who are the architects who are involved in this project or is it just one architect?
I actually don't know.
Yeah, the master plan was developed by Todd Clark and Zach Vrdy. Todd is a local architect here in Kansas, and Zach, outside of this project, works almost exclusively with Core Crenshaw. I had the relationship with him at Dismal River. But as we're going through that search and we knew our why, what was important to us, it became pretty obvious that these two guys fit what the city was
looking to do. Zach is as you know Core Crenshaw, their work is just incredible and the shapers that they have worked with them or just artists, and so we're very lucky to have Zach come in each year. It is pretty funny. We've we've rented the doser for three weeks, but outside of those three weeks total, he's done everything with a Minix and a two foot bucket. You know, we've had like we've done the renovation with seven tools basically a chainsaw, a sidecutter, a tractor, you know, a
Mini X, a bobcap. It's it's very bare bones, but you know everyone has bought into it, and not just our staff but the community as well well.
So then when you're thinking of doing one of these rounds of improvements on the course, what do you assign to yourself and your staff and what does Zach Vardi the shaper take care of.
Yeah, so we will go in and identify work area, workspace. One thing that we have done, and we did this at the very beginning, was because this irrigation system is so new, because expenses are so low, you're gonna have to work within the confines of the current irrigation system. You have total freedom to go up, you can go over,
but we're not moving irrigation heads. And so that's really kind of at the beginning this picture frame he felt maybe restricted, but we've came up with some really, he's came up with some really cool options because of it
that I don't think we would have previously. So we'll pick out the site that he wants to work in, he'll he'll flag it off, we'll remove the sod, we'll remove any of the trees that are in that area, and then we get out of his way, let him do the work, and then we're going behind him and regrassing afterwards.
And then how would you characterize the way that the holes change before after right? You know, if you could give people an idea of what these holes. I know this is hard on a podcast. You know, the pictures probably do the best job of this, but you know, I've looked at the aerial imagery and it is incredibly obvious which holes are belong to the old version of the course and which holes have been reshaped, rethought by
your crew and by Zach Vardy. And so what is the nature of the change that is taking place here? What are the holes? What shape are the holes? Starting to take Now.
I think the biggest compliment that we get each time is how natural it looks. And so you think of these you know, these natural dune sites, they have blowouts and whatnot, and that's kind of how these rough edge you know, native bunkers are trying to mimic, but it
just feels right. It's open. People are getting the vistas that they hadn't had in you know, decades, and so it's going back to a more we're playing off the land, which again we were blessed with an incredible sight, and so opening those those corridors up again, you know, removing a pine tree, taking a tree from behind the green to create you know, a long shot, to pull your eye off the green and remember, oh we're this is an experience, like I'm not just grinding over a golf
ball and trying to you know, focus. They're they're now looking around and feeling the golf course as much as they are playing it.
Yeah, so a more naturalistic appearance with the bunkers, you know, kind of the blowout style edge. What kind of reshaping is happening with the greens? How is how is that playing out?
The original architect was Frank Hummel, and he drew up the blueprints and then handed them off to a secondary firm to implement his ideas well. The firm wasn't a golf course firm, and they're they're just not going to be as precise as as they are today. And so we will we will look at the we'll look at the original blueprints and use those as inspiration and kind of bring back some of the features that we believe are you know, we're interesting at the time. We're expanding
the greens back out to bigger dimensions. This is a very windy sight and so we need all of the all of the surface on the green and short grass around to be incorporated. So we're really looking at those original blueprints. And then Zach has the architectural freedom to to make any changes or implement any any feature that he would like to. It's really, i would think, kind of an architect's dream to yeah, go do what you want to do. We're the grass people and you're the pro so go make it happen.
We have we haven't really talked too much about the history of the course. You mentioned the architect Frank Hummel, I believe is the name the course dates back to the nineteen seventies. You know, have you started to look much at the history of the course, is that you know a significant source of inspiration here.
It was definitely played into as we were trying to pitch this. Why we need to start this project now is we're coming up on fiftieth year anniversary twenty twenty six, and so Buffalo Dunes has been the public option in the state of Kansas for the first fifty years, and we wanted to really make sure that you know, this is something the community has taken pride in to this point, and it's something that we want them to be proud of for the next fifty years. And this project allows us to do that.
Cool. So I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier. I want to wanted to make sure to get into it a little bit. You mentioned you built created a turf nurser. What what is the importance of taking that step in a project like this.
It's got to be one of the first steps. It gives you a ton of freedom, regardless of if you're going to do a project or not. There's so many variables when it comes to mother Nature. You know, she's not always going to be kind to us during the winter months, and so having a nursery gives us an opportunity to repair damage without having to try to grow back in during the spring and people are trying to play golf and those conditions just kind of lag through.
We don't know about vandalism, you know, then we have an opportunity to patch that stuff up quickly. It's having a nursery as everything.
Yeah and uh. And then also, because you've been developing some of this turf, you've been able to go around and provide turf for other places in the area. Could you explain that to me a little more? What exactly is happening here.
So let's just use Whole one as an example. We're going to renovate Whole one this fall. That green will be stripped out and so we'll do sod cuts and we will inform the local nine hole golf courses maybe two months ahead of time. Hey, this is when we're starting our project. If you'd like to come and check it out. You know, we're going to get rid of this old variety. It's still super quality. If you would like to, you know, take it to your property and do with it how you wish. We would love to
give it to you, we're gonna don't. We don't have a current need for it because we're going to replace it with the brand new bent grass that's on our nursery and so yeah, it's as simple as that. We cut it out, we put it on palletts, they pick it up, and they go and put it on their property and get enjoy it.
It's one way of kind of strengthening ties between the golf course and the community. And you know, in the times that I've heard you talk about this project before, you've emphasized the role that the community, the local and regional community has played in helping with this renovation. So what are some of the various ways that people who live in the area have become involved in what you're doing here?
This is this is probably my proudest point of with this project. There's going to be a lot of cool architectural things that come out of it. Golfers are going to be able to enjoy it for a long time. It's going to be fantastic from the agronomy side, but the community is really the highlight of this project. So a few ways. Initially, we started as a municipality, we had some bluegrass left over, so we reached out to the parks and rec, the cemetery, the pool, anyone that
may have a turf that they're taken care of. Hey, we have some of this available. You know, if this would help your facilities, come get it. And so we started building these relationships through that and they've just continued to strengthen over time. A good example of our process is the first year, it took us four days to
lay the first green made. We made the mistake as maybe a little over arrogant people thinking we could do ourselves as a maintenance staff, and that was the incorrect decision. And so we've reached out, We've made these relationships through our municipality and now the all the departments come out and help laysad on a green. We laid the green this year with the city employees in three and a half hours. The police chief was there, the firefighters were there,
the secretaries for parking rec were there. We've had over twenty different departments come out and be a part of this project. And you know, as well as I do, if you lay a green and you're out in this process, that comes your hole. Now you're going to go up every time you're playing that hole. They have a tie to it because they've kind of, you know, went through
the mud with us in this process. It's a it's a hard job, but at the end of it, there's so much pride that's attached to it that they're ready to do it again. And then you know, you do a podcast with the Friday and they're going to blast it out because we were talking about their green and their project and it's no longer a golf course maintenance project or Buffalo Dunes. This is this has really evolved into a full community project.
Have you noticed this kind of building up with each round of renovations you've done, because you know, one of the distinctive things about this project that you're doing is that it's stretched out over a number of years here, so you're kind of giving people a chance to get involved if they want, and if they get involved once, you know, maybe they'll come back again and bring a few friends.
Yeah, and I'd like to point out now too, you know, six years does feel like a long time, but if we step back and look at this as a as a big picture thing, as a golf course, it's evolving. You know, six six years is probably not that long of a deal. So I would those listeners out there that are thinking about doing a project. It doesn't have to be a turnkey thing. You can make these incremental changes and it's going to add up to something pretty quickly.
Yeah, and I want to add that, I think it should be more common that these projects last at least six years, right, because they tend to turn out better if if they're implemented over a long period of time.
Yeah, Each each hole is because we have so much time with it, it becomes very intimate. We we think through each detail for a number of years before it's implemented. But again, it gives us, it gives the you know, volunteers, something to talk about for that year, and they're then they're wondering, what what are we going to you know, what greens are we doing next year? You know, and they're they're planning it and it's part of this cycle.
Our high school girls, golf team, our wrestling team are to me, all of our golfers, non golfers have been a part of this project and it's it's a ton of fun when they come out and lay agreeing with us.
What does your staff look like right now? You mentioned seven to eight employees. You know that's a that's a small staff, right, and so how have you found people and helped bring them along.
It's a really cool culture over the last seven years. Actually, I had a one of my college kids reach out last week come on board, So we're already fully staffed. This year we didn't We don't have any We have all returning employees. The culture is extremely strong. These guys want to be a product part of this project. So I've got myself three assistants and mechanic, and then again
I'm fortunate enough to have an extremely seasoned staff. I think that outside of that two three people and so one big thing for our renovations is when we do it is after labor day, and that that's when our soil tends to start cool down a little bit. You don't have to chase stuff around the golf course. And so two or three of those other guys, while we're throwing sod, they can be taking care of the golf course easily, and so we kind of the timing of it helps us out of ton.
Gotcha, Okay? Now, you know when you say you're fully staffed. I bet there are a lot of superintendents out there who are like, you know, what is this witchcraft? How do you how do you manage to make this happen? And you know, it sounds like a lot of your staff is local, and so maybe maybe that's part of it. But you are in Garden City, Kansas. You're not in Denver, You're not in Kansas City. There's not a massive pool of potential labor to draw from. So what are some
of the keys? Do you think? What are some of the secrets to getting people to want to come and work for you?
Well, it's a again, this has turned into a community project, and so they're aware of it. They know that the golf course is an opportunity. They've they've probably been out there and they've seen it, and that they understand that it's a cool place to work. But you look at all these small towns and they're they're very prideful. You know, Josh at wild Horse probably doesn't have to go out and look for people because people want to be a part of wild Horse and sand Hills are the same way.
These these small towns truly support these projects because it's a it's a pride thing for them. People think that there's not a lot of a lot of things to do in Mullin or or Holy Oaken. Maybe there isn't, but there is one thing, and that's the golf course. And and let's go be a part of it.
Yeah, I mean it's pretty clear. You know, from having talked to Kyle, hegland a lot at sand Hills about how he manages that. It's almost like he he might even find it easier to do what he's doing now because he's got that whole place absolutely on lock. You know, any any kid who he thinks has potential, he knows their name by the time they're twelve years old, and
they're gonna come eventually work for him at sand Hills. Yeah, and so sometimes this can work to your advantage being in a small town, definitely.
And I think that the superintendent, Kyle's went out into that community and it's not just him asking for help. He's going out and helping the community. He's he's volunteering
and coaching. He's he's in the community. And so when he yeah, he can identify the kids because he's around that community that go out and you know, I think Superintendent's often, you know, set back and don't go out and tell our stories or don't go out and try to build these relationships, because we tend to like to grow graps more than we like to talk to people, and so it was kind of a it's kind of our fault sometimes, but you've got to go out and
make those connections, and you have to be the person to go out and do it first. They're not just going to come to you in most situations.
I mean, especially since golf can be have a bit of an intimidation factor on its own, and so it's understandable why people might not come to you, come to you first, you know, just to break down the fourth
wall here a little bit. You and I met at the National Links Trust Symposium in Washington, d C. Late last year, where you were part of a really excellent I thought agronomy superintendent panel, and so you know, I know from that that you had a lot of discussions with other municipal golf course superintendent's, municipal golf operators, fundraisers like you saw everything I did during that symposium, all the conversations that are going on about municipal golf stewardship
and America and I thought that there were a lot of different perspectives. Right, you were representing one perspective of how to get a renovation done very cheaply and in house and locally through a community based method, and there were also some some other ways of doing it that were more kind of fundraising led where we were hearing about thirty million dollars being raised for projects and things like that. So, you know, I'm curious just your what
your big takeaways from that symposium were. What are some of the things that you're still thinking about having experienced that.
The first thing is, you know, we Buffalo Dunes prides itself on being accessible and affordable, and that's driven a lot of the reasons that we've done these things in house. Would my staff prefer that we have an irrigation crew come in or someone else come in and do the sod, Yeah, we would, but we all so we also believe that by doing it in house we can maintain our twenty
five dollars green fee. That's awesome. You know, we think that everyone should be able to play this game, and municipal golf I think maybe in the past has had a bad rap of maybe conditions or you know, different things like that service may not be always the best, but to me, it really is the purest form of the sport that we have still here. People are going out and it's not the conditions again, it's it's who you're with, and it's it's I want to go out
and play. After a blue collar approach, I got to go work a job, but I'm going to come out and play men's and women's leagues. And I think that the municipal side needs to really use that to their advantage. There's a lot of cool aspects that come along with that that maybe you don't get at a club, you know,
where there's other things that factor into that experience. But yeah, I think that you pal they should be proud of providing this type of outdoor activity and you know, providing that green space for your community is very important.
Yeah, And it strikes me as you're describing why you're doing things in house, it's not that it's not that you all love every second of it. It's not that it's easy, right, It's not that people wouldn't rather be maybe doing day to day maintenance and just doing their normal jobs. It's hard to do this stuff, but there's a commitment to keeping the green fee low and a recognition that what you do now and the way you
do it has an effect down the line. And that's something that sometimes I see people maybe not thinking about. It's okay, let's hire this contractor, or yeah, let's accept these millions of dollars from somebody. Well, once that kind of stuff starts to enter the equation, the identity of the course changes a little bit, right.
Writing important to identify that Initially people want to see the you know, the map behind me, They want to see the what they don't they don't then they'll do the why later maybe, but that is the why has got to be first. And once you can develop that and build the relationships and know why it's important to every stakeholder, then that's when you really get the momentum of the what. And the outcome in our situation has been nothing but a success because of we started with
the why. We can we can go through these situations because we have that understanding of what our long term vision is. Because again, our why is aligned you know, in several ways, community agronomically, you know, as the golf course. Everything is aligned. And so that's where we've really gained the momentum.
All right, So what is next for Buffalo Dunes. Where are we at in this master plan and what's on tap for next year and the couple of years after.
We've currently completed fourteen green sites forty two bunkers. Total costs to date is one hundred and ninety six thousand dollars.
Will and people might think there might be some people who think that's a lot of money. That's that's like a penny in golf course renovation in terms.
Yeah, we're very proud of that number. We will this year, we will complete the remaining four green complexes, and so all green complexes will be complete at the end of this season, and then twenty twenty five will hopefully just be kind of some button up stuff that we've lower on the priority list, get some tea set in, create those angles that we're looking for, cart path work here and there, but we're starting to really click together the
puzzle pieces that when people arrive at Buffalo Dunes they can really see the vision of what it is and what it's going to be, and that should be exciting. Hopefully we're done with this. There's always something to do, but we'll be ready for our fiftieth anniversary in twenty twenty six.
Cool. Well, I'm really looking forward to seeing the course, and thank you so much for coming on the pod play.
Thanks.
This episode of the FRIDAYGG Golf podcast was produced by Matt Rusius. Thank you, Matt. If you'd like to support Frida Egg Golf on a different level, then consider joining Club TFF. Go to the fridaygg dot com slash membership to see everything that we're offering there. But something new that we just started this week is Tour Guide. This is basically a weeklish feature where our great PGA tour and professional golf writers give you a way to consume
professional golf on a more intelligent level. So in this first edition, Joseph Almania has a primer on Tory Pines, basically giving an idea of what skills this course actually tests. Brennan Porath has a wonderful memory lane segment on the time that Phil Nicholson was accused of cheating at Tory Pines, and finally, Will Knights has a short segment at the end about a particular shot from Nick Dunlap's victory last week at the American Express that is going to stick
in Will's memory really enjoyed reading this this morning. So that's just something new that we started, and that's what we do in Club TFE. We're always looking for ways to improve that offering. So again, the Frida egg dot com slash membership, that's Club TFE and thank you for listening, and we'll be back next week with another episode